Effects of Social Innovation Financed “Housing First” Programs on Retention, Utilization of Services and Cost-Savings
The Case of the Pay for Success program
Abstract
This article presents an evaluation of the impact of the Commonwealth’s and MHSA’s first homeless social innovation Pay for Success (PFS) initiative on housing retention, utilization of emergency services, and cost- savings. The analysis methods used include: survival analysis to compute housing retention; Wilcoxon Signed- Rank test to find out the significance of differences between the before and after housing utilization of inpatient hospitalizations, outpatient hospital visits, emergency department (ED) visits, ambulance rides, days incarcerated; and a cost-benefit analysis to translate usage into dollar amounts. We found that after 365 days of PFS, the retention rate is 92.2 percent. In both the six- month and twelve-month analyses, we find significant reductions in utilization of emergency medical services but not incarceration. Cost savings on emergency medical services amount to $2.2 million. Overall, PFS is successful in housing and retaining homeless high utilizers while reducing costs to the public.
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Copyright (c) 2017 Singumbe Muyeba, Joe Finn, Thomas Brigham (Author)
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